


The Sun and the Stars

by hisghost



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF, Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Inspired by Call Me By Your Name, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22771486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hisghost/pseuds/hisghost
Summary: Picks up where the novel ends, but contains elements of both the novel and the film.Elio reminisces on when he decided it was better to speak than to die but now perhaps it was better to have died after all.
Relationships: Oliver/Elio Perlman
Comments: 12
Kudos: 35
Collections: call me by you name





	The Sun and the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! This is my first time writing a fanfic for this fandom, so I would love any feedback you guys could give me. This film and novel crushed my soul into a million pieces and I just felt like I had to pour my thoughts onto the page, hence this angsty, melodramatic fanfiction. Hope you can enjoy and please leave a comment <3

There were ones before you, Oliver. And there were ones after. And there will be ones later still. But in the middle of them all, like the sun, you shine. 

I tell my friends I moved to Rome for the opportunities, which is partially true. There are not many of those for a classical pianist in the Italian countryside. But I knew it was because I could not live in that house any longer. After my mother’s passing the home seemed far too large for one person, and the loneliness only reminded me of how much you lingered in that house. Every night when I laid in my room, whether it be alone or with whomever I decided to bed that night, I clutched the sheets to my face as if I could inhale your smell that had long dissipated. As if I could engulf any small particle of your being that remained in the cloth and bring back the sight of seeing you standing at the foot of the bed, nothing but smooth, tan skin and aching desires. And every morning when I woke, I would go into the kitchen and half-expect you to be sitting at the table, yellow pages and yolk-stained eggshells skewed everywhere. And every morning when I realized I was alone, completely and utterly alone in every sense of the word, I would crawl back into bed and close my eyes, hoping to dream of your presence because facing the reality of your absence was simply too much to bear. That house is rented now, to a rich couple from New York who throw their wealth into vacation homes and fancy dinners. I wonder if they ever lay in bed together at night and think about who had laid there before. 

And I also wonder if you ever think about me. After you came back to pay your respects to my passed father, twenty years after we met, after you told me that you did indeed, remember everything, you came back a few months later, telling me your wife thought you were here to teach literature at the local school. But we both knew why you were really here. It was because you are like me, and you couldn’t forget, and you couldn’t let go of the piece of you that still lingered in this house, soaked into the sheets upstairs, diffused into the water in the pool outside, embedded in my pores and in my mind. And that was the first time I realized we were in the same position; just because you were the one who chose to leave, to get married, to have children, did not mean you ached for me any less than I did for you. We were one and the same, you and I. You just hid it better. You always have. 

And that month you were here felt a lot like the first. In the afternoon we rode bikes into town and felt so young, with the warm breeze running through our hair that was now streaked with grey. We would sit by the statue and reminisce of the time when I decided it was better to speak than to die and I finally felt I had made the right decision after all. We drank too much wine and became intoxicated with our mingling voices before we followed each other upstairs and made desperate, messy love on the sheets that have been permanently stained with you. And in the morning we would walk to the rocks by the sea where you loved to sit and we would bask in the sun and in the happiness and in the _fullness_ of it all. 

But then the night before your flight back to New York we laid in bed together and I asked if you would stay and I thought you would say yes but you said _“I can’t”_ and I died a little inside. And after that there were no calls. No letters. No postcards. Nothing. Sometimes I wondered if you ever existed at all or if everything was entirely a dream, a memory I made up from horny teenage hormones and a desire to know what love felt like. And I thought maybe it was better for you to be a dream, safely tucked away inside me, rather than dissolving into the air and pretending like none of this mattered. And I hated you for coming back that last time, because in the twenty years you had been gone I had forgotten, slowly but gradually. And I had met others I loved, others who stirred up the same warmth that you had all those years ago. And when I was with them I thought, he was not that special, that Oliver, because in the morning their laugh made me so happy I thought I would choke and at night their bodies felt like fire under my hands. And in the decreasing frequency at which you would come back to haunt my memories, I would brush you off with the justification that we will always be a bit in love with whom we loved when we were seventeen. You had your young love, and I had mine. And that was life.

But then you were suddenly there and everything came back and I felt a fullness I had forgotten that I needed. And the man who had come after you saw that in me as if he had always known there was a spot he could never fill. 

So suddenly my thoughts were all _Oliver Oliver Oliver_ as if you had never left and never been forgotten and never been hastily replaced with a man who had wavy brown hair and blue eyes but didn’t wear a Star of David around his neck and didn’t smell like sea salt and suntan lotion and didn’t look at me in the morning like a blind man seeing the sun for the very first time. But all you were was an evil reminder that I would never be full because I had never let go of my seventeen year old love. And after you left the second time the emptiness stayed, permanently this time. 

And perhaps it was the desire to fill the emptiness that I finally wrote you five years after. Just to tell you I had moved and my mother had died. But underlying all of that you knew there was more left unsaid. And perhaps that is why you wrote back, telling me that you were sorry for my loss and to come to your son’s graduation party in May. Your letter was formal, curt even. But then you signed it _“ - Elio”_ and I too, knew there was more left unsaid. 

The months before May were reminiscent of the day you asked to meet at midnight. I was not sure if I wanted to see you, and did not know if you would even show up. And even if you did show up, would it be the you that I wanted? Did that person even exist anymore? Because now there was an Oliver _wife_ and an Oliver _job_ and Oliver _kids_ , an Oliver _life_ in which I had no obligations. We were strangers now, really. And who are we to tell strangers what to do? 

And so I asked myself the same question I did back then: _Do I know you?_

Nonetheless, I soon found myself in the humid New York heat that summer, surrounded by buildings that were too tall and streets that were too crowded. The air smelled of cigarette smoke but it wasn’t the brand I liked. It made me feel very small. 

And then I found myself looking at you and your son, and feeling dirty because your son is simply the spitting image of you from that summer. He reminded me of you even more than you did. And he reminded me of the things I used to do to you, and the things you used to do to me.

You had grown weary over the years, the lines around your eyes were unmistakable now. You looked gaunt, Oliver. You looked tired. But then I remembered you were nearly 50 now and wondered why I was surprised. 

But you were still effortlessly handsome and you smiled just the same. And when you laughed the whole room would turn to look at you because you just had one of those laughs that people paid attention to. But you didn’t laugh as often as I remembered. And your eyes no longer gleamed when you smiled. 

“I’m going to grab a drink with my old friend Elio,” you said to your wife, “I’ll be home soon.”

And then you kissed her on the mouth and I died a little bit inside. 

And now here we are. Standing in this dark alley where no one can see us. You made sure of that. It reminds of the time we were in Rome and you kissed me and you didn’t care who was looking. I guess you care a lot now. You broke my gaze just to see if anyone was nearby, and I died a little bit inside again. 

I can taste the alcohol in your breath, and feel the urgency of your quivering mouth against mine. This kiss is different, rougher, bolder, not filled with the slow passion we had that summer, when we knew we were on borrowed time but were too enraptured with each other to care, when everything was new and exhilarating, and I ached to encompass every inch of your skin until all of your essence became me and all of mine yours. When I could taste the salt from the sea on your tongue but now all I could taste was the bitter longing for a time when this longing was sweet. This kiss is different because now time overwhelms passion. It is time that is driving your tongue into mine, time that is digging your fingernails into the small of my back, time that is making me grip your hair so tightly I could feel the follicles coming loose. Because we know there will be no “later” after this. No more chances for me to convince myself that you are mine, no more time for me to embed your scent into my being or memorize the way your eyes gleam when you see me. Because we were simply at an end, for we had used up all of our borrowed time and then foolishly asked for more, starry-eyed and innocent, and we expected that somehow, someway, time would be granted to us and we could spend forever nestled in our comfortable bubble of soft lips and smooth skin and lingering caresses. We were too encompassed in our infatuations to realize that this request only made our world spin faster into the end. 

And so we kissed, hands on each others face, relishing in the feel of each other’s skin before that too would fade away. There would be no more time, and the beast of the poet would be relinquished. 

I felt the familiar pang of emptiness in my stomach, and realized that after all these years, I wasn’t empty because of your absence. Because here you were, pressed up against me, as close to me as you could possibly be, and yet the emptiness was stronger than when we were oceans apart. I was empty because I knew we could never go back to that fated summer, when we were both young and beautiful and our eyes were full of stars because we believed the future would be just as bright. Now, as I feel the wetness on your face and mine, I see that these stars have evaporated back into the sun. Away from our grasp. And just as the youth of our eyes have sunken over the years, so have our dreams. And we realize that the future we had hoped for only forces us to look to the past to reminisce of a time when this emptiness was filled with possibilities. And that made me die a little inside even more. And I wondered how many more pieces of me had to die for you, the beast of my poet, to be relinquished.

And so when you pulled away and held my gaze, and whispered _“Oliver”,_ I did not reply because we missed our chance. Perhaps it was time to let the memories of the past become only dreams, safely tucked away inside our bellies, not only to protect their divinity, but also to prevent them from taking a hold of our heads that are consumed by them daily, of our hearts that hurt because we cannot do anything about them, of our skin that aches to make them a reality, of our entire beings that feel empty because neither you or I could deny that we lost the stars we found that summer.

And maybe for a short while we thought we could find these stars in someone else, come alive against the skin of another. God knows I have tried. But we have both come to realize, there is only one body that holds these stars for us and there is only one being that is created when these stars are transferred. There is only one love that has brought both of us out of the depths of not knowing, not knowing who we were, not knowing what we wanted, not knowing what it felt like to be completely and utterly whole. 

I know now, Oliver. And the fact that it keeps getting taken away from me is killing me. 

My mind travels back to the Berm, with the grass flowing in the wind and the birds flying over our heads, the sun spreading its yellow fingers over our skin. I had said, _I love this, Oliver_ and you replied with a smithe chuckle and a careful _Us, you mean?_ , as if you had read my mind. Because yes, I did indeed mean _us_ , but it wasn’t just that. It was also just _you_ , how you came into this place I’ve known since I was born, sauntering in with your carefree _Later!_ s and white toothed smiles, immediately enrapturing every man and woman in this town, and suddenly it was as if you had been the one who had grown up here, etched your essence into every cobblestone on the ground and every brick in the walls, walking around like the world was yours if you decided to reach out and grab it. And this awoke in me a desire that I had never known, a desire to be seen, a desire to speak and have everyone in the room clinging to my every word. And you not only ignited this desire in me, but you were also the first to fulfill it, when you relinquished Chira’s bed for mine, when you gave up the chance to have the most beautiful girl in town waltzing around on your arm to become one with me instead, when you looked at me after our first night, like you would shrivel up and die if I didn’t say anything, you were the first to ever make me feel like anything I said _mattered_ , as if my very presence had taken your world into a realm you had never known before. And then, under the soft heat in the Berm, you kissed me like my lips were made of glass, beautiful but easily broken, yet perhaps copper was a better analogy because your mouth had left sparks of electricity in their wake. I could taste the coffee we both drank a few hours before, black and bitter, but it was sweet on your lips. 

But now, instead of sweet coffee, I taste only alcohol on your mouth, and it burns. Things are different now. You have sons who look up to you. A wife who would cry if she ever knew. A profession that would sour if you ever went to work with me on your arm. And as much as I want to shoot into space, run around this earth so fast that it shifts back in time, back to when we were laying in the Berm and tangled up in our room and suntanning in heaven and whispering sweet nothings on that rock by the ocean, away from the eyes of everyone except each other, as much as I want this within the depths of my soul, I know all the reasons this is impossible. Because we can’t. Because you won’t. And because I think I am clinging onto the last piece of myself that hasn’t died in your wake. If you, once again, saunter into my life and show me what it feels like to be whole only to slink away when morning creeps over the night, I fear I may die completely. 

I used to think you would take pieces of myself with you when you left, and you only needed to be present for me to find them again. But now I realize you haven’t really taken any of them at all, only extricated them from my body and left them to rot at my feet without replacement. These pieces have been festering on my toes for the last twenty-five years. They are really starting to smell now. 

And in this moment you are looking at me like you did after our first night, like you might shrivel up and die if I don’t say anything. I can’t bear to see you broken this way, so I look at my toes and say what you said to me back then, words I should have heeded instead of throwing away into the summer air:

_Just don’t._

And then I removed my hand from yours and swung my bag over my shoulder. The ghosts of the past follow me out of the alley and into the taxi and onto the plane and I push them down in my belly so they will leave me alone. But doing so only makes them angry so I know tonight will be a restless one. 

There were ones before you, Oliver. And there were ones after. And there will be ones later still. But in the middle of them all, you are a black hole, into which I fall.


End file.
